


what's in a name

by remnantof



Series: genderqueer au [1]
Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Crossdressing, Gender Issues, Genderqueer, Multi, Other, Pre-Relationship, Sexual Experimentation, Teenagers, Trans Character, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-13
Updated: 2011-07-13
Packaged: 2017-10-21 08:51:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/223314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remnantof/pseuds/remnantof
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim Drake trying to navigate life as a genderqueer/possibly MTF teen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what's in a name

**Author's Note:**

> reposted from tumblr by the author

He takes Caroline off at the cache, the bathroom of apartment 12 in a building owned and kept empty by Wayne enterprises for a project that is always shy of fruition. The lights hit her before and behind and the wig has pale highlights that don’t.

They’re not right, even if he can’t say why. His mother had hair like this: he touches it, plays with it, can’t shake the weight in his stomach until he takes it off.

The wig, the coat, the scrubs. The breasts don’t look right either, but they look—better, somehow. Better than nothing, and he turns, closes the door to look in the full-length mirror on the back.

Shivers, because the weight in his stomach twists and doesn’t go away, but. His dark hair is lit up from behind and the light—softens everything, the edges of his body, the lanky thinness of his arms and the sharp cut of his hips. The thinness makes sense now, the stretch of cotton panties across his hips makes a pale blue sense even if the bulge is all wrong.

It wasn’t wrong this morning, he thinks, smoothing a hand down his front, reaching—but not touching it. He doesn’t want to touch it.

Back to the sink, the mirror that cuts and crops him until there are just the straps, the lip gloss and long eyelashes, tiny stud earrings. He sighs and his lips click apart, look wet and shiny and realer than the pale frame his mouth had when he woke up today.

The comm shifts over in the other room and Bruce asks for him, speaks his name in that perfect, masculine voice, barely cut by volume or frequency, and he’s Tim, he’s Robin, not whoever he just found staring back at him. He rubs the lip gloss off on his arm and feels it stick and tighten his skin. He washes the rest of the makeup off and unhooks the bra, and the feeling is everywhere, is his whole skin.

When he runs out to get the communicator from his suit, he’s still wearing the panties.

-

Stephanie is the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. Or, she’s the second of the most beautiful girls he’s ever seen: her suit contrasts with her hair, hair so pretty she can pull it up in the sloppiest tails and buns and still look amazing. He wishes she could let it hang out in costume, but it’s still nice to watch her pull the cowl off, shake it out and let the air sift through it.

And her body—he feels so worthless next to it, doesn’t understand the way her suit can hug her in the right places and his can’t—his suit that _Batman_ made. His hips fit against her hips and don’t measure up, and her breasts are the same size as Caroline’s, but they look perfect on her. They’re real, and soft in her sports bra, and it doesn’t even matter that it’s a sports bra because they’re just. So perfect. He touches them and she feels something he wants to feel, kisses him harder and says yes, yes, just like that.

Sometimes he leaves the gauntlets on for her but he doesn’t really want to, wants to feel them without the barrier. It feels too much like truth when he can’t touch her skin with his.

When she touches back he doesn’t understand why, what she finds to smooth her hands over in the cut of his arms, the hard bones of his joints, why she thinks she needs to hold onto his shoulders. They’re not good shoulders, not—reliable, there’s something shifting in them: too bony and sharp to fit beside Steph’s and too narrow to fit beside Bruce, Dick, Kon.

Her nails are short but clean against his stomach. He wants to paint them: why does he want to paint them? He wants her to paint his too, wants to see his painted nails when he looks at the fingers curving over her bra, and it’s a stupid thing to think about, he’s sure, when his girlfriend is trying to roll his tights down.

He wants paint on his nails when he looks down and sees his hands on her wrists, wants to look back up at her and blink the eyes he remembers in the mirror that night, round and blue and framed by long dark lashes. He doesn’t have them, though, he’s “Tim—” in her husky voice, he’s a question with lace panties under his tights and he doesn’t want her to see them and he doesn’t want her to put her hand in them because.

He’s really not sure. He’s supposed to want it, he does, just—he wants her to feel what he feels, when he mumbles _let me_ and rolls her tights down instead, kisses her back into the bed and puts his hand down her panties, wets his fingers against her and pushes two inside.

-

Sparring with Dick is a dream come true that he doesn’t really think about anymore. He learns more than ways to move, he learns—why to move, why to move that way. Cassandra, on the other hand, is a nightmare he didn’t know he’d have: she teaches those things and more, asks questions the others won’t.

Why a person moves the way they do. What it expresses.

He starts sweating before they start moving, and she knows, she wants to know why he’s nervous. She might already know, but—maybe she wants him to think about it. People are afraid of her for so many reasons, it might hurt sometimes, to think you’ve proven your trustworthiness and find resistance anyway.

She’s teaching him kicks today, and he’s not getting it, until he stops kicking the way Dick taught him, Bruce taught him, and tries to just—move the way she does. The shift of her weight, the roll of her hips, the lift and power of her leg. He imagines a heel at the end of his boot and aims it first, strikes the dummy with the hardest part of his foot, spins it on its axis. She glows and frowns at the same time, her hands on his hips asking why he moved them like that, why was that easier—

He doesn’t know, and easier isn’t the word for it, he thinks. It’s just _better_ , his body off balance but something else feels right, finally. She lets him do it again, silent and watching, reading his body until he’s flushed and sweating from more than the work.

When he’s finished they head for the showers, separate ends and there’s no sign but he feels a pull, he wants to be on the other side of the partition in an abstract gut-pinch way. The sweat stains on his workout gear decide against it though, make him feel ugly again, put him back on his side of the wall.

The ache in his thighs is easier to focus on, the stretch and pull of every muscle in his groin and if he has to feel them, at least they ache. At least they remind him of that high, perfect kick.

-

Dad and Dana are at a movie: the house is empty and he doesn’t have to report for patrol for another two hours. He knew this was coming, this privacy, and part of him shook while he did his homework at his desk, while he waited to hear his dad calling out, pitched his voice to answer. The door closing, the car leaving.

Dana doesn’t own a lot of dresses, a lot of clothes for that matter—but that’s alright, he’s on limited time right now. It feels strange to change in their room, but the mirror is right there, and easier to sneak out than to sneak the clothes back in.

She’s taller than he is, her legs are longer, her hips wider. But her jeans hug his thighs and calves in a way his own don’t, rest low on his hips without falling down, without exposing the panties he’d kept from the chest in the cave.

They’re just jeans, he could probably wear them out on the street and not get _too_ many looks, but. He feels better. Feels better in a way that is so thorough, he doesn’t think he’s felt it in a long time. Like maybe since that night at the circus, or maybe even before that. It feels a little like putting on the Robin colors for the first time, like—like his cape. Things he was just meant to wear.

The rest of the Robin suit doesn’t feel that way anymore. He remembers Steph’s, the skirt, the tights, the hair—that. He can’t believe Bruce fired her, can’t believe Bruce wanted him back after seeing her in that suit. Robin the Girl Wonder, he whispers, and it feels like he’s talking about a ghost but also like he doesn’t have to be. The suit isn’t in a case, but it has to be somewhere. He doesn’t have a lot of hair but he could make it work, somehow, and he’d always liked that shade of red Stephanie wore. Robin red, on her chest and framing her wide, bright smile.

If only Batman went to the movies. If only he wasn’t…himself. That doesn’t feel right either, but there’s so much that never feels right, has never felt right, that he sets it aside. Smooths his hands over his hips in his stepmother’s jeans and. And takes them off, folds them and puts them away, because the sun is down and it’s time to go. Time to be the Boy Wonder for another night.

-

When Cassie kisses him, they’re both trying to remember Kon. She wants to taste him on his best friend’s lips, and Tim wants to be hard for her, wants to be someone who has to make his lips soft, who has bigger arms and can pick her up, match her strength. Someone she can’t hurt when she pushes him against the wall. He wants to be that for her, he’s trying, but—

he remembers Steph too. He remembers Cassie before—this, before the Titans, her short hair and stubborn mouth. Girl Wonder; Wonder Girl. They used to hug, he used to put on fishnets and fur and pick on her, pull her pigtails short of, well. Actually pulling her pigtails.

Mister Sarcastic could do this. Mister Sarcastic could ask her for—for things Tim can’t ask, doesn’t know how to be or if he even could. He remembers Caroline too, in her scrubs, her cotton panties—Cassie’s are like that. Practical under her jeans, a little sweaty, a little more than sweat when she shoves them down.

She doesn’t say anything when she rolls his tights down, her strong hands folding the armor with ease, then gentler against the lace and microfiber. Black panties under red tights under black panties, Jason would laugh at that, he thinks, but Cassie cuts a look at him that is just—sad, a different sad than everything else she’s been feeling. They’ve been feeling. “Do you want me to leave these on,” she asks.

Oh. He shudders, touches her hands where they’re scratching a little at the lace. “Yes.” It comes out quiet and strangled, strangles a little more when she grips his thighs, fingers that will bruise him so easily, and pushes her face into the thin fabric, puts the heat of her mouth on his cock and asks again, keeps asking—is this okay, Tim, are you okay?

“I’m okay, it’s okay—” it is and it isn’t, the lace on his thighs and heat pooling in his belly, but the way his cock pushes the fabric out, the hard line of it. She puts her mouth on it and groans, but he doesn’t know why. It’s all wrong, she wants it anyway. She likes it.

She used to do this for Kon, he thinks. Be Kon, be—he puts his hands in her hair, pulls a little when it feels good, pulls a little more when it doesn’t, and she pushes his legs open, wider, a little more. Runs her fingers against his ass and slips the panties down over it, not off, just down. Licks one and rubs it against his hole, strokes it like.

Did she do this for Kon, or is she just doing it for him? Does she _know_? He doesn’t even know. He doesn’t do this, doesn’t do anything, felt afraid to before now. Now there’s too many other feelings for that, Kon and Cassie and Tim and whoever he is right now, right and not, good and bad, coming in his panties and she groans, spreading the wet spot around with her tongue.

He reaches down and touches it, gets some on his fingers and lifts it to his face. Smells it but doesn’t taste. She’s shifting up to position herself over his face and he doesn’t want to know how wrong it will taste.

-

He’s sitting on the roof of the tower next to the new Blue Beetle, close enough to feel a low grade hum and heat from his armor. Jaime’s head is exposed, his hair lifting away from his face. It’s dark in a way his own isn’t, a softer kind of dark, more brown, and Tim wants to tuck it behind Jaime’s ear, but that’s not something he does. He’s not supposed to.

The sun is going down, the cold of it blowing in off the water, giving Tim a reason to keep his cape closed over his suit, over the hard lines and colors of it. It’s been a year since Kon’s death, a year since the redesign, and he regards it now with a soft gut-punch of regret. No more green, no more Robin, just armor for the muscle he’s grown into.

Maybe the chill is why they’re sitting this close. Maybe Jaime is as tired from the day’s work as he is, and can’t be bothered to move, but it doesn’t feel that way.

He wants to sit here, feeling the scarab hum more than he hears it. Maybe Jaime wants to sit here too.

“Is the Scarab a boy,” he asks, pulling his knees up under his cape and hugging them, leaning into them. It makes him feel small enough for the softness of his voice. “I mean, has it told you, or does it just…feel like one?”

Tim doesn’t know why he’s asking, or he does, but Jaime can’t. Jaime’s biting his lip like he’s just now thinking of it. “I guess…I guess if I had to pick one I’d say yes, but I don’t have a reason to. I don’t think it’s either. It doesn’t feel important?”

That’s a harder gut-punch feeling, making Tim look away. How can it not be important? How can it not be…everything? “But if it wasn’t a boy, if it didn’t want to make boy clothes, or boy armor—do you think it would have picked you? Do you think you’d still want it to?” He wishes they were sitting further away now. He wishes the words would stop coming out of his mouth, stop reaching Jaime, who is so close, and so confused, but not the way Tim is confused. Probably never the way Tim is confused.

His hair is soft dark brown and Tim wants to touch it, but the shape of his armor suits him and the way he moves in it has an ease that Tim doesn’t think he could touch, even if he was allowed. And he’s not the first person Tim’s sat beside, feeling this way, and it feels like a long, ugly drain: the realization that he won’t be the last.

“I hope it—she’d still pick me,” Jaime finally says. “I’ve done good things since then, right? I wouldn’t want them to go undone.”

The wind finds a way under Tim’s cape and peels it open, chills the flush on his skin and makes him grab for it. Jaime watches then doesn’t, because Tim can’t look him in the eye, doesn’t know what to do with the answer. It’s not a bad one, it’s not—bad of Jaime to feel that way. It almost makes him feel better about the armor he’s wearing now, the things he’s done in it.

That skirt, that lipstick. He could still do those things in them, though, and even as he puts his head back on his knees, even as Jaime scoots a little closer and Tim can feel the scarab humming against his back when Jaime puts an arm around him—

he feels that answer push between them, push them further apart.


End file.
